The 99 best things that happened in 2017

Reading the media can be very depressing - it does not give a holistic view of what is happening in the world - and some great things happened in 2017. Angus Hervey in a blog has listed 99 of these and It's been difficult but I've picked out 30+ to give you a taste:

An incredible year for global health

1. This year, the World Health Organisation unveiled a new vaccine that’s cheap and effective enough to end cholera, one of humanity’s greatest ever killers. New York Times

8. Premature deaths for the world’s four biggest noncommunicable diseases­ - cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory - have declined by 16% since 2000. World Bank

9. Global abortion rates have fallen from around 40 procedures per 1,000 women in the early 1990s, to 35 procedures per 1,000 women today. In the United States, abortion rates have reached their lowest level since 1973. Vox

11. There were only 26 cases of Guinea worm in 2017, down from 3.5 million cases in 21 countries in Africa and Asia in 1986. Devex

13. Thanks to better access to clean water and sanitation, the number of children around the world who are dying from diarrhoea has fallen by a third since 2005. BBC

14. Leprosy is now easily treatable. The number of worldwide cases has dropped by 97% since 1985, and a new plan has set 2020 as the target for the end of the disease. New York Times

16. Global deaths from tuberculosis have fallen by 37% since 2000, saving an estimated 53 million lives. WHO

Some stunning victories for global conservation

18. China invested more than $100 billion into treating and preventing water pollution, and launched nearly 8,000 water clean-up projects in the first half of 2017. Reuters

21. A province in Pakistan announced it has planted 1 billion trees in two years, in response to the terrible floods of 2015. Independent

26. Indonesia pledged $1 billion to clean up its seas from plastic, Kenya announced a ban on plastic bags, and Chile said it will ban them in its coastal cities (30 countries now have existing or impending bans in place). ABC

27. Eleven countries continued their plan to build a wall of trees from east to west across Africa in order to push back the desert. In Senegal, it’s already working. BBC World Hacks

30. In 2017, the ozone hole shrunk to its smallest size since 1988, the year Bobby McFerrin topped the charts with ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy.’ CNET

Rising living standards for billions of people

31. The International Energy Agency announced that nearly 1.2 billion people around the world have gained access to electricity in the last 16 years.

32. In February, the World Bank published new figures showing that 20 years ago, the average malnourished person on planet Earth consumed 155 fewer calories per day than they needed. Today, that number is down to 88.

36. In 1991 more than 40% of Bangladesh lived in extreme poverty. The World Bank said this year that the number has now dropped to 14% (equating to 50 million fewer people). Quartz

A terrible year for the fossil fuels industry

41. New figures at the beginning of the year showed that the global coal industry is taking a hammering. A 48% drop in pre-construction activity, a 62% drop in construction starts and a 19% drop in ongoing construction. CoalSwarm

45. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest pile of money on the planet, announced they were officially divesting from all fossil fuels, and the global insurance industry has pulled $20 billion. Telegraph

46. In 2017, the United Kingdom, France and Finland all agreed to ban the sale of any new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040.

51. In November, a new global alliance of more than 20 countries, including the UK, France, Mexico, Canada and Finland, committed to ending their use of coal before 2030. BBC

…and an amazing one for clean energy

52. The cost of solar and wind plummeted by more than 25% in 2017, shifting the global clean energy industry on its axis. Think Progress

57. General Motors believes “the future is all-electric”. Volkswagen announced it’s investing 70 billion euros and “putting its full force behind a shift into electric cars” and Volvo said that starting in 2019 it will only make fully electric or hybrid cars “the end of the combustion engine-powered car.” Atlantic

58. China is going to install 54GW of solar by the end of 2017, more than any country has ever previously deployed in a single year, and doubled their 2020 goal to 213 GW. PV Magazine

60. Following in China’s footsteps, India more than doubled its solar installations in 2017, accounting for more than 40% of new capacity, the largest addition to the grid of any energy source. Quartz

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”

63. On International Women’s Day 2017, Iceland became the first country in the world to make equal pay compulsory by law. Two days later, India passed a bill giving every working woman in the country 26 weeks of compulsory maternity leave. Economic Times

66. Saudi Arabia said women would no longer need male permission to travel or study. A few months later, women received the right to drive. BBC

68. Women now occupy 23% of parliamentary seats around the world, up from 12% in 1997. The Middle East and North Africa have seen a fourfold increase in that time. World Bank

69. As plunging crime closed prisons across the Netherlands, the government started turning them into housing and cultural hubs for ten of thousands of refugees instead. Fast Company

The world got a little less violent

77. Global deaths from terrorism dropped by 22% from their peak in 2014, thanks to significant declines in four of the five countries most impacted: Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. ReliefWeb

79. The number of executions recorded worldwide fell by 37% since 2015. The decline was largely driven by fewer deaths recorded in Iran and Pakistan. BBC

80. In June, we heard that the homicide rate in Australia has dropped to one victim per 100,000 people, the lowest ever recorded. Guardian

81. Rates of violent crime and property crime have dropped by around 50% in the United States since 1990, yet a majority of people still believe it’s gotten worse. Pew Research

Signs of hope for a living planet

88. Snow leopards have been on the endangered list since 1972. In 2017, they were taken off, as the wild population has now increased to more than 10,000 animals. BBC

91. A decrease in pollution in the Ganges brought Gangetic dolphins, one of the four freshwater dolphin species in the world, back from the brink of extinction. Hindustan Times

95. In more than 60 regions across the globe, more populations of large sea turtles are improving than declining, a big change from a decade or two ago. Associated Press

96. China agreed to ban the domestic ivory trade in 2017. By mid year, the price of raw ivory in Asia had fallen by around half. And in October, the UK government banned the sale and export of all ivory items. BBC

The 99 best things that happened in 2017. An incredible year for global health, global conservation, clean energy. Rising living standards for billions of people. Breakthroughs in justice. Less violence. Hope for a living planet. https://t.co/NK6v4JZCOSpic.twitter.com/WTqSsY4nml